WASHINGTON — Blue Origin said it has passed a key development milestone for its Blue Ring spacecraft, a maneuverable in-orbit transport vehicle designed for national security missions and backed by Pentagon funding.
The company on Nov. 21 said “the Blue Ring team successfully integrated the flight vehicle’s primary structure and internal harnessing with the core propulsion module.” The spacecraft will now undergo additional checkout work before engineers move on to powering up the vehicle.
Blue Ring is built to deliver, host and transport payloads in orbit and shift between orbits as missions require. Those movements fall under what the U.S. military calls “dynamic space operations,” a term used to describe spacecraft that can reposition themselves on demand — to gain a better sensor angle, avoid a threat, support another spacecraft or relocate payloads. Such maneuvering has become a priority for the Space Force as it eyes more resilient satellite architectures.
At this week’s <em>Baird Defense & Government conference, Kylie Ho, Blue Origin’s senior director of strategy, said the spacecraft is being engineered for up to 4,000 meters per second of delta-V, a measure of how much a spacecraft can change its speed using its propulsion system. A larger delta-V allows for more aggressive orbital changes.
Ho said Blue Ring’s hybrid chemical and solar-electric propulsion system is “really designed for some of these interesting maneuvers you can do for a rapid approach against our adversaries on orbit.” The vehicle is expected to carry up to 4,000 kilograms of payload.
Dual-use demand across government and commercial markets
While the spacecraft was conceived for national security missions, Ho said interest has broadened. “The vehicle was built for the national security community,” she said. “That said, we’ve actually found tremendous interest from our civil community as well. We’ve talked to NASA about that quite a bit. I think there’s strong interest there.”
She added that the platform could support future lunar or Mars missions.
The version of Blue Ring now in production incorporates insights from a prototype pathfinder mission launched in January on the debut flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. For that demonstration, the spacecraft stayed attached to the rocket’s upper stage rather than deploying as a free-flying vehicle. The mission tested communications, telemetry and payload-hosting capabilities meant to validate the full-scale design.
Defense Innovation Unit partnership
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit awarded Blue Origin a contract in 2024, of undisclosed value, to help fund Blue Ring’s development. DIU said it is working with the U.S. Space Force to place Blue Ring’s first operational mission on a national security launch projected for spring 2026.
In July, the company announced an agreement with Scout Space to host a space domain awareness sensor — technology used to track objects in orbit — on the Blue Ring vehicle.
The spacecraft is slated to launch into a geostationary transfer orbit before maneuvering into geostationary Earth orbit, a region critical for national security and commercial communications satellites.